Was that sort of like a thirty-eight-year-old man looking for a sweet young bimbo after dumping his wife of twenty years? Oh, hell! Ruby thought. I do not need this!
” ‘Tis ever a woman’s lot and ever will be. Men lust. Women suffer,” Gyda sighed, with a woman’s eternal resignation to fate.
“Well,” Ruby volunteered, “why don’t you women do something about it? It’s just as much your responsibility.”
All the women turned on Ruby, wide-eyed, open-mouthed and very, very interested. Even Gyda.
Oops! Had she blundered again? Perhaps this was a subject she shouldn’t have broached. But, heck, women needed to stick together, to share information, to bond for their own self-interest.
The women still gaped at her, expecting her to elaborate.
“Haven’t you ever heard of birth control, of taking precautions so you won’t have any more children, if that is what you choose to do?”
Freydis pooh-poohed her suggestion with a wave of the hand. “You speak of those useless powders that promise to prevent conception but never do. Just a waste of coins!” The others nodded in agreement.
“Actually, there are powders in my country that do work,” Ruby said, knowing they wouldn’t understand birth control pills. “Haven’t you heard of condoms or sponges or douches?” Of course they hadn’t. How silly of her to ask!
“Condoms? What are they?” Gyda asked. “Do you truly say women have methods to prevent having babes?”
“Yes, they do.”
Ruby had the rapt attention of every woman in the room.
“Condoms are thin sheaths that fit over a man’s male part—so thin the pleasurable sensations aren’t diminished, but so water-tight the male sperm, or fluid, cannot enter the woman’s vagina and join with her egg.”
A storm of questions followed then, and Ruby gave the standard high school health class lecture on menstruation and reproduction.
“But these condoms,” one young woman asked, “where might they be purchased? And of what fabric are they made?”
“I’m not sure,” Ruby admitted, “although I do think they are already being made in the Orient at this time. I think the early ones were made of a soft leather that was rinsed and used over and over, but the ones I’ve seen are thin, transparent membranes, disposed of after every use.” Ruby racked her brain to remember more about a subject on which she was not particularly knowledgeable.
“And the women can make love and not get pregnant?” an amazed Gyda asked.
Ruby smiled and nodded.
“What is a membrane?” another asked. “Is it like the thinnest silk?”
“No, because that isn’t water-tight. It’s more like the thin skin over some women’s breasts, or the skin of an animal that’s been scraped and scraped until it’s almost transparent and used for window coverings.” Ruby tried to think of a better explanation. “I know, it resembles the intestines of animals when they’re thoroughly cleaned out.”
Now the women understood.
“Does this birth control not anger the men in your country?” Freydis asked.
“No-o-o, I don’t think so. If a man loves a woman, he wants to protect her, to keep her from having a child when it’s dangerous for her health, or when there are too many for them to feed or she’s past the prime childbearing years.”
After the women left, Gyda looked at Ruby oddly. “Who are you?” Gyda asked with a puzzled frown. ” ‘Tis strange you know so much that we do not, even though our men trade ’round the world.”
“I come from the future, Gyda,” Ruby tried to explain once again.
“Nay, that I cannot accept. You must come from some strange land we have not yet discovered. That must be it.”
The next morning, after her jogging routine with Byrnhil, the king’s mistress demanded that Ruby return to the palace with her for-a private conversation. Ruby soon learned that the Viking grapevine worked almost as fast as those in modern America. Word had spread already of Ruby’s birth control lecture.
At least twenty women crowded Byrnhil’s solar demanding that she repeat the words she’d spoken yesterday. When she finished, they asked even more questions than Gyda’s friends.
“I will tell Sigtrygg to search for some of those condoms when next his ships travel to the Orient,” Byrnhil declared confidently.